online

If you are a small business owner and don’t have a user friendly website, is that a death sentence for your business? It could be!

In an article that I read recently online about starting and marketing your small business stated that you HAVE to be in the yellow pages or no one will be able to find your business. That may have been relevant several years ago, but now an increasing number of people skip the phonebook and google it instead.

Owners of small business, as I have been, are always thinking of different ways to make their company easier to find. If your potential customer is looking for your services or products online, your yellow page ad that cost you so much money is not doing you one dimes worth of good.

People are becoming an online society, even the ones that were completely against using the internet to find things that they needed for business or their household needs.

Many friends of mine are Ranchers and farmers. Most of them have resisted the progression of business purchasing etc online, but now are slowly changing over from the older methods. They are doing this in two ways. First they try to find things online by themselves, and second, they ask one of the younger generation that is working for them to look it up for them. Either way, they are beginning to get the products and information that they need from the internet more and more. This is in the really rural industry of Farming and Ranching.

So what is the first step to being found by customers online? Have a user friendly website!

You will never be found online if you don’t have a website. A website lets potential customers see what your company offers and how it can benefit them. Here are a few things to consider when adding a website to your companies marketing strategy.

Hosting: You will need somewhere to host your website. There are an amazing number of options out there for hosting and many are not what you want. I look for a company with a good shared hosting plan and, (this is really important to me) 24 hour phone support. A couple that I have had very good luck with are Godaddy.com and Bluehost.com. Another option is to find a web developer that will take care of the Hosting for you (recommended).

Web-developer: Finding a good web developer is sometimes daunting, but there are many good developers out there. If you are looking for the best price without sacrificing quality, look for a new developer that has some experience in design, programming and Online Marketing.

One more thing that is optional but is a great benefit to small business owners, especially when the owner doesn’t have online experience, is to pay a monthly fee for Online Business Management, or Website management. Keeping your website up to date with your business can be a very time consuming thing and having an experienced webmaster do that work for you can pay dividends in the future.

Yes, there always seems to be more and more that you have to keep abreast of when owning a small business, but when it comes to getting your business in the black, some things are just not optional. So find a good web developer and get ahead in this internet culture.